New York cautious as more US states ease virus lockdowns

More US states began lifting coronavirus lockdown orders on Monday but New York — America’s economic engine and coronavirus epicenter — is in no hurry, with hospitalization rates still high.

As Colorado, Minnesota, Mississippi and Tennessee became among the latest states to loosen restrictions, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he is preparing to lengthen confinement measures for badly-hit areas.

“May 15 is when the pause regulations expire statewide. I will extend them in many parts of the state,” he told reporters.

New York is America’s worst-hit state, with more than 17,300 Covid-19 deaths out of almost 292,000 confirmed infections.

Cuomo plans to allow manufacturing and construction to restart in some of the state’s least-affected areas after May 15 as part of a phased reopening.

But for now that seems about it. New York has been shut down since mid-March.

“We have to be smart because if you are not smart, you will see that infection rate go right back to where it was. (We) will be right back to where we were 58 days ago and nobody wants that,” he said.

Cuomo said cases were not falling as quickly as he would like, with more than 1,000 new hospitalizations and 337 deaths from the disease in the past 24 hours.

The most affected part of the state, New York City, is likely to be one of the last areas of the country to reopen. A poll out Monday showed residents overwhelmingly backed the shutdown.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that at least 40 miles of streets will close to traffic to give the city’s 8.6 million residents more space to exercise outdoors, in a further sign that the end is far from in sight.

Also on Monday, New York’s elections board canceled the Democratic Party primary on June 23, citing the risk of spreading coronavirus, a move heavily criticized by leftist Bernie Sanders.

As New Jersey, the second-worst affected state with 6,000 deaths, California and the Washington DC region stay committed to continuing confinement measures for now, more than half a dozen states have started a partial reopening of their economies.

Restaurants in Georgia reopened open their doors on Monday after beaches reopened over the weekend, despite criticism from health experts who say social distancing is still needed to stop the spread.

“We need human touch, human contact,” 64-year-old Kim Kaseta told AFP, delighted to be at her local breakfast spot in Atlanta, where waiters and cooks wore masks.

Tennessee also permitted restaurants to reopen on Monday. Alaska, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Mississippi, Colorado and South Carolina have started to allow certain activities as well.

The moves come despite Harvard researchers and the health news site Stat warning that the majority of US states don’t yet have sufficient testing capacity to consider relaxing the stay-at-home orders after May 1.

Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia are well behind, they said, with New York needing to perform between 130,000 to 155,000 tests every day, compared to the average of 20,000 per day around mid April.

Cuomo also said an antibody test of 7,500 people found that a a quarter of New York City residents may have already survived the virus, although that doesn’t mean they are immune to catching it again.

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